The International Olympic Committee received an urgent letter from more than a dozen national anti-doping organisations on Wednesday night urging it to immediately suspend the Russian Olympic Committee and provisionally ban all Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics.

At least one thing became clear on Tuesday as the International Olympic Committee placed Russia’s athletes in a holding pattern high above Rio: it does not want – or trust – Russia to host any major international sporting events.

Several former Olympians who now serve on the International Olympic Committee’s athletes’ commission have warned of catastrophic consequences if the organisation does not ban Russia completely from the Rio Games.

Perhaps golf can cling to the notion of there being no such thing as bad publicity. For a sport supposedly, if erroneously, the sole domain of gin drinkers and those with mild manners, its recent propensity to mingle with controversy has been quite staggering.

The question does not escape in full before Shara Proctor chimes right in. Did she feel she handled her first Olympic Games well? “No way,” comes the response. “Definitely not. I felt like a fish out of water.”

Whatever has just passed when, later this summer, Jessica Ennis‑Hill sits back and decides whether a remarkable career should continue for another 12 months, she will never have had a period like this.

Peter Dawson, the president of the International Golf Federation, has accused his sport’s leading players of “overreaction” regarding the Zika virus threat after Jordan Spieth became the latest to withdraw from the Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee received an urgent letter from more than a dozen national anti-doping organisations on Wednesday night urging it to immediately suspend the Russian Olympic Committee and provisionally ban all Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics.

At least one thing became clear on Tuesday as the International Olympic Committee placed Russia’s athletes in a holding pattern high above Rio: it does not want – or trust – Russia to host any major international sporting events.